What are the differences between a £200 DVD player such as the Pioneer DV-444 and a high-end one costing over £500?

Is it all purely audio performance?

Are there any real home cinema gains?

Usually ... better video/audio codecs, better audio, better pictures, better algorithms, more precise disk reading, more features, better build quality ... oh, and plus the top end players sometimes have a buffer so that you don't notice the pause between layers.

Personally, I just plumped for an entry-level player (Sony DVP NS300, which sits at the same end of the market as the Pioneer 444) because it got glowing reviews anyway and I couldn't justify the additional cost. If you're really into home cinema, then a top-end player is what you need to do everything else justice. If you're not, then I doubt very much you'd notice the extra quality that you've paid for. Just make sure you don't plump for something too cheap or you'll suffer some of the problems often reported such as disk incompatibilities, jerky images, poor audio etc.

[Reiner]

oh, and plus the top end players sometimes have a buffer so that you don't notice the pause between layers.

Now that's not true, is it!? There is hardly any player which has a buffer and even some, no, most costing more than GBP1000 don't have one either.

Originally posted by Reiner
Now that's not true, is it!? There is hardly any player which has a buffer and even some, no, most costing more than GBP1000 don't have one either.

I thought Arcam and Denon included this in a select few of their models.......??? You even said so in a post on another thread actually....

"Yep, layer change is a "problem" on most players - but mainly because the studios mastering the DVD put the layer change in the middle of a scene and not between two scenes.
So both sides are too blame.
But if it's really any isse you may wanna try the new Denon (1000 I think) which comes with a 4MB memory to overcome this - supposingly."

Help!!! DVD Layer Problem

So does it or don't it??

[wellsi]

The swords are laid bare and the challenge spoken...

Didn't realise it was fighting talk

Just wanted to know

[Reiner]

No need to fight but if you read carefully I used words like "some" and "most", so it's not "none" and thus my statement remains correct.

And "hardly any player" means exactly that, i.e. only a very few do actually have this buffer including the Denon DVD-1000 for example and IMHO the Proceed PMDT, pehaps less than a handfull of other brands or no-name players.
Now name those who don't have a buffer / a visible layer change: the list will get much longer and includes most of the big names, too.


However, the point I wanted to make that even most of the very expensive players don't have a buffer either, something which is not understandable when you pay so much money.
The Arcam DV-27 for example is such a player: expensive but has a visible layer change with picture freezing and sound drop-outs (Source: http://www.area-dvd.de/hardware/arcamdv27.shtml).

Cheers - that clears that up

Just for the record - I used the word "sometimes" as well in the post above. But okay - the point is it's very rare.

The main thing is though that Jag should hopefully be enlightened by our reponses here (although he appears to have dropped off the face of the earth )

[wellsi]

Well, even if Jag has disappeared, I'm now enlightened as to why some of my dvds have had half second freezes... I'll no longer think they're faulty!

And I was only being a bit mischievious earlier on... (grin)

Cheers for your thoughts guys,

I seem to recall that my mate's Denon 2800 didn't pause at all when we were watching films a while back...then again I might've been drunk, and who keeps tabs on fractions of seconds when wasted...?